A Theory of Civilization
Stronger orders can afford to export excess masculinity resulting in colonialism and imperialism, and the order spreads and brings new resources and opportunities into the civilization. In the case of Western Civilization, however, this process has stagnated because there is nothing left to "conquer." Everything has either been developed or no longer represents an economic or physical frontier that is left open for conquest. This is the point at which the civilization's masculinity begins to decline. Young men lose the ability to act in a masculine way without destabilizing the order. The masculine aspect is suppressed and declines while the managerial feminine rises. In the developed West, but also in China, there is now very little room for masculine movement, aggression, or experimentation. The only expanding aggressive sectors are in the highest technology, and the vanguards of these sectors account for less than one percent of the work force.
As of 2022, the internet is among the only frontier territories remaining, so it makes sense that men have now become addicted to it while neglecting a real world that is increasingly being managed by stable females.
Example 1: The incredible amount of red tape regulations required to start a business in America. These regulations exist precisely because new businesses are no longer needed. New businesses destabilize mature markets.
Example 2: Ever expanding licenses required to do anything. Precisely because the only small improvements that can now be made require lots of time because the yields are so small (or even nonexistent).
Example 3: Women have displaced men in schools and universities because the system no longer has any need of masculine characteristics, it is looking for feminine stabilizers to protect the developed order.
Counter argument: American productivity continues to grow steadily.
Defense: because the technologies being innovated by less than 1% of the population are being adopted by workers, but this does not mean that workers have anything interesting to do except memorize their uses. The adoption of technology in strict business environments is not aggressive, experimental, or expansionist, it's just a stable managerial process.
A lack of masculine experimentation in building things and the discouragement of aggression leads to a decline in masculinity, but this decline is a necessary process if an order is going to maintain itself. Masculinity is not allowed to continue when there is no productive outlet for its expansion, therefore capitalism/colonialism/imperialism comes to an end. Society then becomes "feminized" as it attempts to simply manage its established order in a developed form.
On a more personal level, women enter an aggressive man's life in order to "civilize him" for the next phase of his existence as a householder and utilizer of his aggressively accumulated resources. It could be said that women wait on the sidelines for the outcome of young men's aggressive expansions, and then they choose which male's resources to "civilize" into a household. The same applies to civilizations, in a way. The feminine rises when the development of the order's aggressive expansion has been finished and needs to be consolidated into "developed" form.
Christianity attempts to retain masculinity by turning masculine aggression inwards toward self discipline/purification and then outwards into missionary work and conversion. The perfection of the inner person and the outer society.